Our approach to the visitor’s center of Yellowstone National Park was stalled by a pack of shaggy buffalo that lumbered across the road. Cars lined up ten deep behind my grandmother’s truck as my father and I watched in awe of the creatures, heading from one side of the asphalt to the other, on the way to pastures laid out beneath the ancient crags of the Rocky Mountains.
In the parking lot of the visitor’s center, we were greeted by an elk that stood six feet tall to the shoulder, and were astonished by the nearby herd grazing in the meadow, beneath clouds plucked straight from a John Ford western.
The hot springs spat gassy bubbles from their crystal blue and vermilion surfaces as we navigated the wooden footbridges on the way to Old Faithful. The geyser didn’t disappoint, shooting a stream of super-heated mist into the air over one hundred feet into the air.
Our lunch at the nearby Old Faithful Inn transported us back to the late 19th Century as we dined in the midst of antler candelabras beneath the four-story tall balconied main room. The cathedral beams reached up impossibly high, still not doing justice to the Montana blue outside, spangled all day with puffy clouds, and held in reverie by the visitors to the park, and the mountains crowding in as a parish to how testify to the ultimate beauty of this natural gem: America’s great park.